Author: Tasha

Absolute Brightness

| Tasha

Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne

15-year-old Phoebe lives with her mother and older sister Deirdre in a house attached to her mother’s beauty salon.  Leonard, their uncle’s stepson comes to live with them and neither of the girls is ready to give him even the slightest chance.  It doesn’t help that Leonard is unusual.  He doesn’t seem to care that his behavior may get him beat up or at the very least ignored by everyone.  He goes ahead and wears the clothing he wants to, which include platform sneakers that he made himself.  Leonard quickly makes a place for himself, catering to the ladies who come to the salon, much to Phoebe’s relief and dismay.  When Leonard disappears, he leaves behind a huge hole in everyone’s lives, Phoebe’s most of all. 

The writing here is nearly incandescent with beauty.  It is writing that makes one pause, sometimes gasp, reread and then think for awhile.  It is writing one reads aloud to another person just to hear the words spoken.  It is the writing that makes this book so exceptional and such a gem of a novel.  Here’s just one passage amongst so many that shine:

I had suddenly realized that I didn’t have the slightest idea who Travis was.  For the past month, I’d been making up a picture of Travis in my head, and in the process I had refused any information about him that came to me from the real world.  If it didn’t fit with the picture of Travis that I already had in mind, I had no use for it.  Travis Lembeck was my creation, my Frankenstein.  Even the very real business of kissing him, smelling him, being pressed up against him in the dark couldn’t disturb my fine-tuned, half-baked fantasy.  Now with the revelation that he was going to join the service, that he blew up cyberpeople and destroyed cybervillages just for fun, the Travis I’d been cherishing in my heart suddenly seemed trumped-up.  Like those life-size, cardboard cutouts of presidents and movie stars that you can stand beside and have your picture taken with so you can give everyone the impression that you hobnobbed with the genuine article.

Lecesne crafts realizations and sudden insights with such care.   The novel is filled with corners that you round just to come upon a moment like this.  It is appropriate that a novel that starts as a character study becomes a mystery and then a court drama.  As Lecesne leads us through these conventional novel settings, he continues to write a book that surprises, quite an accomplishment.  His characters are unconventional, interesting and thoroughly complex.  They act like real humans, people you would know, and the joy is that you get to experience things through their eyes. 

Highly recommended for teens ages 14-17, this novel is piercingly intelligent and will reflect your own life and choices back on you. 

Snow

| Tasha

Snow by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Lauren Stringer.

From the deep midnight blue endpages featuring a single snowflake drifting, you know that you are in for a special treat.  This picture book explores the various types of snow through its poetic verse and deeply colored illustrations.  There is snow that is peaceful, snow that holds promise, snow that outlines and illuminates, snow that buries and snow that is full of memories.  As a native Wisconsinite, I have seen all of these snows and loved each and every type too. 

Rylant’s verse is simple and deep, taking the time to reveal the magic of each type of snowfall, the beauty of thick and thin snow.  Stringer’s illustrations are lovely, filled with the different colors of snow from peachy warm to midnight blue to chill white.  They move from coldness to warmth and back again using deep colors.  Each of her illustrations evokes a different emotion or feeling, together they marry into a landscape of snow.

Highly recommended for anyone having a snowy day like we are.  This book’s poetry allows it to work with small children, but will also be of interest to older children for the same reason.  The verse expands the age level considerably from other picture books.  Appropriate for ages 3-9.

Mighty Max!

| Tasha

Mighty Max! by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Elliot Kreloff.

In his flowing red cape, Max is eager to be a super hero who saves the day.  Max’s father wants him to sit down and just be calm for a bit.  Max tries, he sits for awhile, but is always up and moving again with a new imaginary game to play.  When he and his father head to the beach, Max finds plenty of ways to be Mighty Max and help out at the same time.  But, he is still moving fast and imagining big.

The fast pace of this book perfectly captures the race and movement of a small boy with a big imagination.  His inability to sit still is seen as something wonderful though sometimes exasperating.  I love the pairing of a fast-paced child and imagination, because I think that is something that is often overlooked.  I have a child who moves when speaking, runs when thinking, and races when pretending.  I see him in Max and Max in him so clearly. 

Kreloff’s illustrations further the connection between the book and children with their child-like think crayon lines.  They are also stylish at the same time, creating a book that is accessible for children but doesn’t lose itself to childishness.

Highly recommended as a readaloud for preschool groups, this is also a great book to read with your own fast-paced child.  Humorous, fun and buoyant, this book will fly off the shelf even without its red cape.  Appropriate for ages 3-6.

CCBC Goes Green

| Tasha

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center has an incredible bibliography of books on earth and the environment for children and teens.  The books are broken into three categories:

In My World: Loving the Earth

What Happened Here? Environmental Challenges and Change

Taking Action: Planet Pioneers

The categories have items for many different ages with each book given a handy age range to eliminate guess work.  Nicely, each category is broken into fiction and nonfiction.  Even better, the books are from the CCBC Choices lists which means that they are all worth looking at. 

Where the Steps Were

| Tasha

Where the Steps Were by Andrea Cheng.

Pleasant Hill Elementary School will be torn down after this year.  This novel in verse tells the story of that final year as experienced by the third graders in Miss D’s class.  From learning about how to get along with one another to learning about great figures in history, we get to experience life in their world.  Some of the students are dealing with problems of jealousy and friendship while others grapple with more pressing issues like homelessness. 

Cheng excels at writing poetry that children will immediately relate to and understand.  She moves skillfully from humor to seriousness and back, weaving her poems into the experience of a year.  There are also small glimpses of Miss D’s personal life as she struggles with her own son.  This deft humanizing of a teacher is also important for children to see.

Highly recommended as a classroom read, this book may not fly off the shelves on its own, but will be appreciated by any student who opens it.  Appropriate for ages 8-10.

The Newbery Effect

| Tasha

 

The Washington Post has an article about how the Newbery Award could even discourage children from reading!  Now, yes, I am a critic of recent choices by the Newbery committee.  I feel that in recent years we could have seen some of the fabulous AND kid-friendly titles win the big prize.  It seems that instead they are relegated to the Honor row. 

But the Newbery dampening reading?  I don’t know about that.  Yes, if teachers use the Newbery prize list as a unit the recent winners would probably sit lonely on the shelves passed over for older winners with more kid appeal.  But most kids do not spontaneously head out to the library looking for books with that large gold seal on the front.  So I can’t see it dampening reading much at all.

Could the Newbery start to stand for both quality and a book that children will want to read perhaps even talk about with friends and promote themselves because it is sooo good?  Yes.  But I have to believe that the relationship between children and books is healthy, resilient and constantly questing for the next great read.  To do any less would be to despair over children and reading.  And that ain’t happening!

Keeping the Night Watch

| Tasha

Keeping the Night Watch by Hope Anita Smith, illustrated by E. B. Lewis.

At 13, CJ has gotten used to shouldering a lot of responsibility for his mother and little sister.  Now his father has returned and CJ is just plain angry.  How can his father returning feel even worse than when he was gone?  CJ has to work through his complex emotions before he is willing to give his father another chance to be part of the family.  Told through poems, this book reveals (as only poetry can) one boy’s inner emotional landscape amid those of others in his family.  Through her poetry, Smith has created a book that will speak to teens going through similar situations and also any teen who has had to deal with difficult family situations.

There is tension, sorrow, joy, pain and jealousy here that is revealed without flinching.  This book rings with truth.  The illustrations add to the feeling of reality as Lewis’ paintings feature portraits of this family on a stark white background, illuminating the inner feelings again. 

Here is one of my favorite passages from the end of the very first poem in the book:

After dinner, I wash dishes.

When Grandmomma comes in

to make a cup of tea, I say,

"This is a mess."

Grandmomma knows right away

I’m not talking about the dishes.

She hugs me and says.

"No, this is a family."

That passage sums up this book beautifully as people struggle to figure out what a family is.  This brief book should be placed in the hands of reluctant readers who will find themselves here.  Highly recommended for ages 11-15.

Holiday Reading

| Tasha

Driving to work this morning, I was lucky enough to catch this piece on NPR about holiday reading.  While the holiday theme is great, I particularly loved the part about how important reading aloud is for children of all ages.  Here is the quote that had me cheering aloud:

But some parents feel self-conscious when they read aloud, says Judy Freeman, the author of a guide to read-aloud books called Books Kids Will Sit Still For. Freeman says they should get over their inhibitions.

"Your kids don’t know the difference. They just want to be warm, and they want to hear your voice, and they associate the words with you," she says. "It turns them into readers. If you want your kids to read, you have to read to them."

Yes! In fact at the end of the piece the father in the family reads aloud a bit from Twas the Night Before Christmas and in that moment evokes the warmth and holiday magic of families reading together. 

The NPR website also has a list of great holiday books to share aloud with your children. 

Twelve Terrible Things

| Tasha

Twelve Terrible Things by Marty Kelley.

From the initial warning about the horrible things in the book all the way to the triumphant end, this book is immense fun, though terrible.  Each double-page spread shows a terrible thing from a first-person point of view.  It is your ice cream that has fallen on the ground, your dentist moving towards your mouth, and even you who is the new student in a crowded classroom. 

Children of all ages will see their own fears reflected here with unflinching realism and great style.  Each illustration has a quirky feel to it, a glee about the terribleness of the page that makes children feel a rush of it themselves. 

Perfect to read aloud to a class, children will automatically start their own list of terrible things.  Though there are few words on each page, this book will work best with children who are slightly older:  ages 5-8.